Wolves of College St

Year 10 Commerce and Year 11 Economics students recently participated in the Australian Stock Exchange's annual Sharemarket Game.

Participants were provided with a virtual $50,000 to use from August to October to establish and manage a share portfolio with the objective of maximising capital gain.

Radford students achieved eight of the top 10 ACT results, with Matthew Gagan (Year 10) winning the local division. Matthew placed 25th out of more than 17,500 national and international student participants.

When the share market game first begun, I realised that the best value for money, and the best chance to make the most money, was to go big on a few shares. I bought about $10,000 oF 5 different shares, including TPM and VOC. I got extremely lucky, and the shares rose very quickly. I didn't want to lose my profits, so I sold the shares. In the first three days I was $3,000 in profit. I didn't buy any new shares, and my portfolio stayed the same. After about a week, I bought into SDA, with another stroke of luck, the company rose again, I was at about $54,000. At this point, I realised that I didn't need to make as much money as I could, I only needed to have more than everyone else in the state. I stayed out of the market, because it was consistently going down, and I knew I would be fighting an uphill battle to make any more money. The logic was that everyone else would be struggling to make more money, they are the ones taking the risks, not me. This strategy lasted me until the end of the game. On the last day, the player in 2nd place was only $20 below me; I didn't buy anything, and he lost $800.

Summary: I made all my money at the start of the game, and then held until the end of the game, letting others take the risks to catch up. -- Matthew Gagan Year 10